Beetle latches onto curtains in protest of its remote control.

Posted at 1:41 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Gilliam

Me, Pinky and the Brain have already done this.

Posted at 2:19 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Leb

Now if you could work that onto a locus, you could any individual country at will, (insert evil laugh here).

Posted at 2:24 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Winston

Someone should get wired to see how it feels…

Posted at 2:27 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Terramoto

gotta feel a tiny bit sorry for the little guys. My first thought was actually how many they probably have to go through. They usually don’t live really long in their adult stage and all that thrashing about indoors probably results in frequent broken wings.

Then again, they are so freaking clumsy on their own we could probably only improve their flight.

Posted at 2:36 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Caleb Kraft

Ah.. Very useful. I could use for.. ah.. well.. ah.

Posted at 3:09 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Sergio

all this research/proof of concept will lead to human trials eventually, thats the ultimate goal right?
Probably start being deployed in the army after tests have been done in institutes etc.

Posted at 3:43 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Mike Mcfarlane

So on first reading the article I kind of went “cool”, but I watched the video, and not normally someone who is put of by things such as seeing how my meat is killed and all that…I did feel a bit sorry for the beetle*…I mean no arduino, no twitter…whats a cybernetic beetle got to do round here to get a bit of web presence?

*It was genuine, but then when I stopped watching it went away which helped me make a funny about it without crying…

Posted at 3:45 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by gringe

this is unspeakably mean. wtf is wrong with these people!

Posted at 4:28 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by bill rowe

it’s a beetle, people, relax. what we really need to be worried about is that they didn’t use an arduino.

Posted at 5:09 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by andrew

I’ve dreamed about this since I was a little kid. Mount a camera on it and send that pig into area 51!

Posted at 5:20 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Brock Lee

bill rowe = PETA

Posted at 6:08 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Napalm

Oh, Andrew. Thats the funniest thing I’ve heard in months.

Posted at 6:36 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Jack

I read: Radio Controlled Beetle FIGHT footage. That would be much cooler.

Posted at 8:22 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by amk

Title SHOULD have been ‘Real life Beetle Borg’ Anybody else remember that short lived show?

Posted at 9:11 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by Eric

LAME! I could make a video of a tire rolling down a hill and write “stimulating left muscle” every time it veered left, and obviously the same for the right and claim to be controlling it. And if this IS legit, then it’s even lamer for being so incredibly useless. Just use robots already and stop playing with bugs. wtf! University of California = idiots.

Posted at 11:02 pm on Sep 25th, 2009 by alpha

Inventory part of view its really a gud try… but y to try on the live bug.. they could make a an artificial bug with nuts n bolts for some more trial n error.

Posted at 12:00 am on Sep 26th, 2009 by Vijay Kumar Raju

scary shit if u ask me

Posted at 2:55 am on Sep 26th, 2009 by rotceh_dnih

Sorry, not a fan of animal testing of any type. If you’re gonna test hings, strap it to prisoners and see if it works.

Posted at 9:17 am on Sep 26th, 2009 by Patrick

KILL THE SKYNET!!!!!

Posted at 9:32 am on Sep 26th, 2009 by bfo

this is cruel. i’m just as much a tech fan as the next guy but there’s gotta be a better way than carving up living creatures. surely you don’t have to be a PETA card carrier to see that??

Posted at 10:52 am on Sep 26th, 2009 by bLuRrEdMaN

Ah man, if we humans kill each other, the insects will probably take over the world. Let’s get ‘em now we still can. :P

Posted at 11:04 am on Sep 26th, 2009 by Peter

alpha: it’s neuroscience, not just robotics.

Patrick: yea, if we knew enough about how it all works to do that, we would. We’re learning the fundamentals right now, and these beetles have very simple (comparatively) systems.

You know how nice it is to have modern medicine? Now, do you know what kind of horrors preceded it (by necessity)?

As well Patrick. At what point does it become cruel? What about the trillions upon trillions of microorganisms we abuse all the time?

Posted at 9:07 pm on Sep 26th, 2009 by draeath

This is stupid that people are putting money into this and why does the military always want stupid sci-fi shit and not go after REAL stuff or why government will spend time on useless research and not REAL research with NASA?
don’t give a damn about the bug but I would like to see it give twitter updates of what commands it was being given!

Posted at 9:27 am on Sep 27th, 2009 by T&P

What they need to do instead of stopping and starting flight is to get the beetle to change altitude on command. Then you’d have some real control instead of just left and right.

Posted at 9:47 am on Sep 27th, 2009 by hmmm

I would be alot more impressed if they could control the beetle with RF radiation hitting the bug, instead of the lobotomy style they did here.

Posted at 7:35 pm on Sep 27th, 2009 by razor386

You’ve obviously missed all the previous work on this sort of thing where flies had their heads semi-seperated from their bodies, rotated 180 degrees and bonded back on to see if they got confused and flew left when they meant to go right…

Posted at 8:04 am on Sep 28th, 2009 by James

forget cyborg beetles…this only leads to armys of unwilling cyborg soldiers

Posted at 10:30 am on Sep 28th, 2009 by yep

@Napalm PETA=people eating taesty anamals :)
btw cool untill they do it to people…

Posted at 11:05 am on Sep 28th, 2009 by monkeyslayer56

As a trained and certified beetle doctor, I find this extremely repulsive. Do you know how many beetles have come to me with holes in their heads?

Posted at 10:49 pm on Sep 30th, 2009 by Dr. Beedor

Absolutely amazing!

Posted at 1:20 pm on Oct 4th, 2009 by Phrog

Someone mentioned testing on prisoners… how do you know this beetle hasn’t dont some horrific things in its life? Things that would land a human being in jail…

Posted at 8:42 am on Oct 13th, 2009 by 0x808080